The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information Service (GNIS) provides a search facility, with an XML return.Â This can be used for mapping small groups of place names; single counties, etc.Â The results (with a provided search form) can be downloaded as CSV, too.
Using the XML files has an additional benefit though.Â The data can be transformed into a more usable (and more readable) web format with detail as RDFa.Â Further GRDDL transforms can extract the RDFa to RDF XML.
e.g. Parker County, TX
[xml service] <http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis/x?fname=&state='Texas'&cnty='parker'&cell=&ftype='ppl'> =
[source] http://www.rustprivacy.org/sun/usgs-parker.xml
[transformed* file] http://www.rustprivacy.org/sun/usgs-parker.html
[trans. RDF (head only)] http://rustprivacy.org/sun/usgs-parker-head.rdf
[trans. RDF from RDFa] http://rustprivacy.org/sun/usgs-parker.rdf
The locations of the transforms*, as well as information on name spaces, etc. are at the top of the transformed page (e.g. usgs-parker.html).Â The place name links take you back to that record on the GNIS servers and several mapping services are available on the right side of the page (if you wish to see a "real" map).
--Gannon